


bikinis, handguns, and diner fries

by patrokla



Category: Preacher (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s02e12 On Your Knees, F/M, Multi, Yuletide 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:41:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21813838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrokla/pseuds/patrokla
Summary: “Jesse,” she says, shoving a heel against Cassidy’s leg when he tries to keep talking, “here’s my question. If you’re gonna go off and play God, what exactly do you need us for?”or, five ways Tulip and Cassidy left Jesse, and one way they stayed.
Relationships: Jesse Custer/Tulip O'Hare, Proinsias Cassidy/Jesse Custer/Tulip O'Hare, Proinsias Cassidy/Tulip O'Hare
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	bikinis, handguns, and diner fries

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nokomis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide Nokomis! I sat down to write some Preacher fic and this is what came out - it's a little light on Jesse, but I'm hoping the OT3 feelings come through even in the parts he's not in.

  
1\. 

Tulip slides cold french fries across her plate and listens to Jesse talk himself into circles trying to explain the stupidest fucking idea in the history of ideas. It’s clearly not his idea, which makes her feel a little better - but only a little.

“I’m sorry,” Cassidy says, after Jesse finally falls silent, “Are you really sitting there and telling us with a straight face that you’re going to take over for God? Like you actually think you could do a better job than him?”

“I think I can do a damn sight better than someone who couldn’t even be bothered to show up to work!”

“Like you would’ve shown up for your own sermons if I hadn’t been there to throw a bucket of cold water on you on Sunday mornings!”

Jesse gets that look on his face, the one that says he knows better than anyone else. Tulip never liked that look, and she likes it even less on a Jesse who wants to - or thinks he wants to - be the Messiah.

“Jesse,” she says, shoving a heel against Cassidy’s leg when he tries to keep talking, “here’s my question. If you’re gonna go off and play God, what exactly do you need us for?”

“I…” Jesse starts, and she looks at him with the flattest stare she can muster.

“You’re my family,” he says weakly, and Cassidy snorts.

“You’d be better off brainwashing some other idiots into loving you,” he says bitterly, “it’d do you just as much good as we have.”

“It’s not like that,” Jesse says, still looking at Tulip. “I don’t want to do this without you.”

Tulip takes one last look at Jesse, taking in everything he ever was to her, everything they could’ve been together. Then she exhales, shaking her head.

“But you can do it without us,” she says. “And you’re gonna.”

She doesn’t need to look at Cassidy to signal that they’re leaving, which is a relief because she can feel tears trying to force their way to the surface. She just stands and walks out, brushing a hand against Jesse’s shoulder as she leaves.

She knows that she won’t ever see Jesse Custer again. It won’t be long until there’s nothing left of the man he was.

—

  
“Cassidy, I don’t know why you had to bring that fucking dog.”

Banjo yips loudly, like he knew she was talking about him. It’s the same awful noise he’s been making for the last hour, high-pitched, demanding, and totally incomprehensible.

“Well I had to, didn’t I? Who else was going to look after the little fella?”

Cassidy smoothes a calming hand across Banjo’s head, and Tulip rolls her eyes.

“Uh, I dunno, how about Dennis? That’s his dog, isn’t it?”

“Ah,” Cassidy says, “Dennis…didn’t seem too keen on the idea.”

Cassidy’s wearing a cap low on his face and sunglasses, but his body language has always been transparent to Tulip. He’s clearly hiding something, and it pisses her off, but it doesn’t scare her. For one thing, she’s not the biggest fan of post-bite Dennis. For another, she’s always felt like she could beat Cassidy in a fight, sun or no sun. He’s annoying as hell, sure, but a threat? Not even close.

So she doesn’t try to get the truth out of him, just turns the radio up and sings along as loud as she can, then sings even louder when Banjo joins in. Cassidy keeps petting Banjo, and smiles a little.

—

So, Bimini. It was supposed to happen, it really was - if there were two people who needed a month on a beach more than her and Cass, Tulip didn’t know ‘em. But somehow, when she’d gotten into the car, urging Cassidy to take the empty front seat that Jesse had occupied for so long, she’d felt like she just needed to drive. More than anything, she needed to drive.

So they drive. More accurately, she drives and Cassidy provides an steady stream of jokes, lies, conspiracy theories, and half-truths, with the occasional lurid fantasy about some woman who died years before Tulip was ever born. She doesn’t mind it, actually kinda likes it, even the fantasies. Cassidy doesn’t expect her to respond, doesn’t ask her if she’s alright more than once a day (they’d had to negotiate that one), and he doesn’t ask too many questions about where they’re going.

She thinks that last trait is especially valuable, because she doesn’t know.

—

“What do you mean you’ve never seen the Pacific Ocean?”

“I mean I’ve never seen it! Came close during a bender in Tijuana, but I passed out before I could make it to the beach. Woke up in a puddle of - well, best not to say,” Cassidy says, making a face at the memory. “I’ve found that to see an ocean in this country, you’ve really got to have the motive, means, and opportunity. Not like Ireland, can’t throw a stone without hitting the sea there.”

“Is that why you left?” Tulip asks. She’s a little drunk, stretched out on a queen-sized motel bed in the Middle of Nowhere, Kansas. She can hear Banjo down on the floor, chewing on the chicken leftover from dinner, but Cassidy is eerily quiet.

“Not exactly,” Cassidy says, after a long moment. “It’s a long story…”

“That’s alright. We’ve got plenty of time,” she says, and she presses down on the thought that arises immediately after. Plenty of time without him.

“It’s a story for another time,” Cassidy says, “I think we could use a night or two without any sad stories, don’t you think?”

“If by ‘sad stories’ you mean my dreams -“ Tulip starts, sitting up to face Cassidy, who’s sitting against the headboard.

“No, I didn’t, actually,” Cassidy says definsively, “I was talking about Bambi playing on the TV last night, and Dumbo the night before that. We’re being followed by sad Disney movies across the country, like those Facebook mood manipulation experiments.”

“Facebook manipulates moods?” Tulip asks, moving to sit next to Cassidy. “Huh. I could see that.”

“Well, of course you could, they’re not bloody subtle about it, are they? It’s all about the ad revenue…”

—

“So I’ve been thinking,” Tulip says the next morning, as they’re carrying their bags out to the car, “what if we drove to the Pacific?”

Cassidy already has his hat and sunglasses on, but she can see his eyebrows raise at the suggestion.

“I hear California has some nice beaches,” he says, which means yes, and if this is what you need, and she smiles to be certain in her knowledge of Cassidy.

“Alright then,” she says, and she barely even thinks of Jesse and all the trips they’d planned together as she gets into the car, giving Banjo a brief pat on the head.

2.

On the day that a mainstream news outlet, without even a little nudging from Herr Starr, calls Jesse Custer “the Messiah,” Tulip O’Hare and Proinsias Cassidy are 5000 miles away. On a small island with no cable and a shitty wifi connection, the two of them spend an hour scrolling through online articles about Jesse. Then Cassidy tosses his laptop out the window, and they spend the rest of the day in bed, determined to prove that Jesse doesn’t need to be there for them to be okay. Not anymore.

3.

Time is a funny thing for vampires. Cassidy’s had days that felt like years, and decades that felt like weeks, and a century-long life that sometimes feels like eternity. Somehow, even among all that, time in Bimini feels strange.

The days stretch out like taffy at the sea side, sand-covered and brightly colored. He and Tulip stick together - well, he sticks with her, and she doesn’t argue. They go from resort to resort, leaving once Tulip’s cleaned out the pockets of anyone who’ll play cards with her. Card games in shiny bars, boat tours on water that looks chemically blue, and beach after beach after beach. The official tourism website of Bimini boasts of hundreds of activities available to tourists; after a few weeks, Cassidy thinks it’s safe to say that’s a bit of an exaggeration.

He likes the family beaches best. They’re crowded and noisy in the day, but at night the kids are all asleep, and the parents are all in their cramped hot tubs, and he and Tulip have the run of the beach. 

They’re on one of those beaches very late at night when Cassidy, against the remaining shreds of his better judgement, broaches the topic of Jesse. To be fair to himself, his head was spinning pleasantly from a mix of whiskey and anonymous pills, and the full moon hung hypnotically in the sky, just like it had in -

“Annville, d’you remember it?”

“What kind of question is that, Cass?”

“A stupid one,” he says, “Guess y’did grow up there, after all. But d’you remember how you could go outside at night when the moon was full, and it was like -“

“Like you could see across the flatlands forever,” she says quietly. “Yeah, Cass, I remember.”

He squirms internally, wonders if he’s triggered something that’ll sink her into a familiarly tense, sad mood. He’s not sober enough to do effective damage control, and she’s probably a little too sober.

“I’m surprised you got any fond memories of that shithole,” she says, after a long moment.

“Course I do, y’know me. Fond memories wherever I go, it’s practically my motto. And besides,” he says, words slipping out so almost completely unintentionally, “it’s where I met you, isn’t it? You and Jesse.”

Silence. He listens to the waves sweeping onto the shore and out again, lets the floaty feeling in his head lull him into sleep. 

“Me and Jesse,” he thinks he hears her murmur, right before he drifts away.

—

He wakes up a few hours later, minutes before sunrise by the look of things. Tulip is sitting on the sand, arms wrapped around her knees. He groans theatrically as he gets up, cracking joints and brushing sand out of his hair.

“Morning,” Tulip says, mouth quirking up a millimeter. Such a tiny expression, but it makes his stomach flip. 

“What’s on the schedule today?” 

“Cleaning out those suckers at the Tropicana one more time before we leave.”

“Oh yeah? And where is it that we’re headed next?” he asks, grabbing the blanket he’d slept on to cover his head.

“Not sure,” she says, staring out at the horizon. “Back to the States, and then…”

It’s not a real answer, but he doesn’t really need one. And besides, he thinks he knows where they’re headed. Jesse doesn’t deserve their help or companionship, in Cassidy’s opinion, but the lucky bastard always seems to get it. Despite everything, Tulip’s got a soft spot for him - and as goes Tulip, so goes Cassidy, for as long as she’ll let him.

“Maybe you’ll let me take your Chevelle for a spin, eh?”

Tulip laughs, shaking her head and pushing herself up off the ground. “If you’re good, I’ll let you do the gears.”

“I’m gonna hold ye to that, Tullip. I’ll be so good y’won’t barely recognize me, even better than an angel. Mind you, I’ve met a few angels and they weren’t too bloody good, in my opinion.”

“I haven’t been too impressed by ‘em either,” Tulip mutters, and Cassidy, always just a little too slow, remembers that Jesse is, technically, a L’Anjelle. 

“I’ll tell ye what I was impressed by,” he says loudly, “the cloning thing they could do. Didn’t always work, but my god, when it did? Like watching someone get three cherries in a slot machine every time, it was. Real exciting stuff, at first. Less exciting when y’ve got to bury 30 identical bodies. I dig a grave as much as the next guy, but mass graves? Not really my forte, if y’know what I mean.”

He nudges an empty whiskey bottle with her foot, then turns back towards the resort cottages.

“Littering, Cass?” Tulip raises an eyebrow. “Thought you were gonna be good.”

“Oh please, those angels littered all over the place. Mostly blood and the occasional limb, but if you’re telling me that behavior wouldn’t extend to leaving glass on a beach for children, I’d have to disagree.”

“Okay, when you put it like that, I’m really gonna need you to pick that back up,” she says, and Cassidy, as always, complies.

4.

Tulip leaves Cass somewhere in Ohio, at a rent-by-the-hour motel on the outskirts of a city so small it barely qualifies as one. She feels bad about the location, but not about the leaving - it’s been weeks in the making. Maybe even months, maybe even the second she and Cassidy had walked out of that diner, away from Jesse. Maybe she’d known, even then, that she’d get too restless, too unsettled, too uneasy to stay with anyone who wasn’t Jesse, who didn’t have that specific blend of indulgent and buzzkill to keep her from trying out her most fun (and stupid) ideas. 

She thinks maybe Cass could’ve gotten there eventually, but who had the time for that? Not her. 

She guns it the second she’s out of the motel parking lot, speeds down the dusty highway and doesn’t let herself spend another second imagining other roads she could’ve taken. She was meant to move forward. So she does.

  
5.

“Jesus, I shoulda gotten into bank robbing years ago,” Cassidy pants, bag full of cash slung over his shoulder and a gun in hand. Tulip is two seconds behind him, both of them at a flat out run towards the Chevelle, which she’d parked a few blocks from the bank. There are sirens in the distance, but no one after them yet, and the adrenaline coursing through him is almost as sharp and sweet as the way Tulip will pin him to the bed later that night. 

“I knew you’d like it,” Tulip says, sounding smug and somehow less out-of-breath than he is. “Nothing better, that’s what J - what I always say.”

+1

“You’re my family,” Jesse says weakly, and Tulip grits her jaw and shifts in the vinyl diner seat. 

“You've got a real funny way of showing it,” she snaps, and Jesse seems to wilt a little under the words, although his shoulders and jaw are still set in determination. A shell, that’s what he’ll turn into. A stupidly determined, posturing, lonely shell. 

“Tulip,” Jesse starts, and Cassidy says, “Don’t ‘Tulip’ her,” and the tension, which could snap in a dozen different ways, is unexpectedly broken by Jesse putting his face in his hands. 

“Damn it,” he mutters, and then Tulip watches as he raises his head and his shoulders, finally, fall. 

“I don’t -“ he starts, “I don’t know. I don’t know how to get out of this.”

Tulip seizes on the opening immediately, rolling her eyes and saying, “We’ll get you out of it, Jesse. We always do. Just give us a chance.”

Cassidy nods in agreement. He looks a little reluctant on the surface, exhausted and wary after the last few days of lies and fights, but Tulip can see it in him: the way something in him is still pulling towards Jesse, the way they all pull together.

Jesse shakes his head and laughs a little, disbelievingly.

“We’re really doing this,” he says, "just gonna let the world end."

"Might be fun," Cassidy offers. "I hear Bimini is lovely this time of year.

For a rare moment, they're all quiet. The regular noise of the diner fills the space, clattering dishware and the hum of idle conversation making Tulip feel almost at home. She and Jesse and Cass have eaten at so many diners like this one, filled with tired people and cheap food. 

Unsurprisingly, Cassidy is the one to break the silence.

"Or we could keep on like we have been," he says almost casually. "Trying to save the world while every bloody thing gets in our way. Just no more teaming up with secret organizations, that's all I ask."

"That's fair," Jesse says.

"Let's get out of here before any of your Grail buddies show up," Tulip says, sliding out of the booth.

She gets the feeling, as they walk out together, that it almost didn't turn out this way: the three of them still together. Ready to fight the Grail, God, and whoever else tries to fuck them over. No, they got lucky here. 

She's glad they did.


End file.
